Athletes Come Out In Support Of Japan

By CHRISTOPHER CLAREY

Published: March 20, 2011

They had just moved back to Britain from Japan, and for several days, the British marathon star Mara Yamauchi and her Japanese husband watched coverage of the developing catastrophe and felt moved beyond words, yet powerless.

Then their friend, the British marathon coach Martin Yelling, called with the right idea. Yelling and some of his colleagues wanted to help relief efforts by mobilizing the global running community, asking people to dedicate one of their runs to Japan
with a corresponding donation.

The goal: to cover collectively a distance amounting to the circumference of the earth -- 24,901 miles, or nearly 40,000 kilometers -- in 28 days, with at least one run dedicated from every country in the world.

The Web site, runforjapan.com, was started Thursday, and by the end of the day in Britain, with word just starting to spread, runners from places as farflung as India, Australia, South Africa, the United States and Japan had registered their runs and
support.

''It's been heartbreaking watching on TV, but through running, which is such a positive thing, we can encourage others to make a difference,'' said Yamauchi, who is an ambassador for this initiative along with Britain's biggest
running star, Paula Radcliffe.

''Japan is also a running-mad country, so I think using running as a tool to help will appeal to the Japanese population,'' she said. ''It is just a way for us to help in a small way with a huge problem.''

Small, well-conceived ideas have a chance to grow bigger in a hurry, however, and Japan could clearly use help from all quarters as it faces a death toll that has risen above 6,000 and a repair bill estimated by some specialists at more than $100 billion.

''I think for any country to recover from the scale of this disaster -- the earthquake, the tsunami, the nuclear power station issues -- would be an incredible task,'' said Yamauchi, a former British diplomat, in a telephone interview.
''Yes, economically it's been difficult the last sort of 10 to 15 years, but I think Japan will definitely rebound. I've been really struck by the dignity and strength people show despite all
the suffering they are going through.''

Though governments and major relief organizations are, by nature, best equipped to address a problem of these proportions, numerous sports figures around the world are once again doing what they can to raise awareness and funds, with awareness at this
stage clearly less of an issue.

The South Korean pitcher Park Chan-ho, now with the Orix Buffaloes of the Japanese Pacific League, has donated